Perhaps the three separated then: perhaps not. She could not rise to see. She was paralysed. She lay as in a nightmare, and was conscious only of the yellow gleam of the lanthorn as it quartered the ground this way and that, and came nearer and nearer. At last the man who carried it was close to her; on the other side of the wall. He raised the lanthorn above his head, and looked over the wall. By evil chance, the light focussed itself upon her.
She knew that she was discovered. And her terror was the greater because she knew that the man who held the lanthorn was the gipsy—whom she feared the most of all. But she was not capable of motion or of resistance; and though he held the light steadily on her, and for a few seconds she saw in the side-glow his dark features gleaming down at her, she lay fascinated. She waited for him to proclaim his discovery.
He shut off the light abruptly.
“So—ho! back!” he cried. “She’s not this way! Maybe she’s in the bushes above!”
“This way?”
“Ay!”
“Then, burn you, why don’t you bring the light, instead of talking?” Lunt retorted. And from the sound he appeared to be kicking the nearer bushes, and probing them with a stick.
The gipsy answered impudently, and the three, blaming one another, moved off up the wood.
“You should have brought the dog,” one cried.
“Oh, curse the dog!” was the answer. “I tell you she can’t be far off! She can’t have come as low as this.” The light was thrown hither and thither. “She’s somewhere among the bushes. We’ll hap on her by-and-by.”